


Morning woman, be loved

by HaroThar



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018), The Birthday of the World and Other Stories - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Background Glimmer/Bow/Perfuma/Mermista/Sea Hawk, F/F, Marriage Proposal, Multi, Polyamory, Sedoretu, mention of incest that doesn't actually go anywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 12:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20358511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaroThar/pseuds/HaroThar
Summary: Catra is a morning woman who lies about her moiety in order to win Shadow Weaver's affection. It doesn't work. What does happen is a number of problems, and then a number of good happenings, all interlaced together.





	Morning woman, be loved

**Author's Note:**

> For context: Catra never got asphyxiated and is still Hordak’s #2. She still gets sent out and the Crimson Waste happened, but everything after it did not. They didn’t kidnap Adora, they didn’t get the sword. What did happen? Idk you make it up.

The Horde stripped its native denizens of much of their culture, rearing them as savage barbarians with no honorable conduct, indeed, no concept of manners. People held some form of shame about their bodies, slept together in secret and with reluctance to share such encounters to their fellow cadets and bunkmates. Their privacy was stripped from them utterly, until and unless they could acquire rank. Exclusive heterosexuality was directly promoted, exclusive homosexuality indirectly so, and cadets were encouraged to be monogamous. Hordak had, even, at the beginning of his campaign, attempted to eradicate the distinction between moieties entirely, although the pushback among his conquered soldiers had risen to such a threat of mutiny that Hordak had ceased to care and allowed the matter to drop. He believed it to be a problem that would weed itself out. After all, many of the orphans in the infirmary would have no concept of their mothers, and therefore would not know if they were morning or evening children, surely. But Hordak miscalculated there, too. Each child, with few exceptions, knew bone-deep who they were, surer than their sex. Catra was among the few exceptions, her morning soul manifesting in a way that was utterly ambiguous to those around her, save Adora. 

But they had wanted, so badly, to be sisters. To claim Shadow Weaver as some sort of mother. Adora shared her moiety with Shadow Weaver, an evening girl through and through, and Catra had envied, and wanted, and lied. She called herself an evening girl, Adora’s sister, and sought ceaselessly after their shared false-mother’s approval. 

And then Adora was an evening woman, grown, with her back to Catra now. Abandoned, like all the rest of their childhood together. And Catra had raged. Had torn the bed they once shared. And Catra, she was not an evening girl. But was she a woman? Could she call herself that, when she felt abandoned so? No, she was. She would be an evening woman, and Shadow Weaver would see her as her daughter, yet. Adora was gone, defected, and though Catra was defective, Shadow Weaver didn’t need to know it just. Shadow Weaver could see Catra as the true daughter, the real daughter, the good one. 

But, Shadow Weaver ended in chains. And Catra had her old job. Proud Catra! Evening woman of squadron 35! A success story told among the Hordesmen, a lie told truthfully.

For all Hordak’s efforts to eradicate that which made their people and their culture, the taboo of incest still remained. 

“I love you,” said Scorpia, a morning woman--an _actual_ morning woman. A morning woman, same as Catra.

“Scorpia, I--” how to deny her without hurting her? How to reject her thoroughly without revealing her own secret.

“Hear me out,” Scorpia insisted, taking Catra’s thin hands between strong claws. “Please, Catra, you don’t have to say it back, just. Just think about it, okay? I am closer to you than anyone else I’ve ever known. I care about you so much, and I want to protect you. And I want to see you happy, Catra. I want to see you so happy. So. I’m morning, and you’re evening, and we can, you know,” Scorpia offered her a smile, “make Day together. Build a life together, us and two other women. Or, or men! If you’re interested in that! Well, I mean, I’d probably prefer to have another evening woman, you can just, you can have a morning man if that interests you--but the fact is I don’t care who! As long as I get to be with you, I’d do anything.” Scorpia spoke so earnestly, so delirious with the passions of her own emotion, and Catra knew, at that moment, that she’d done something unforgivable in this lie. What had started as an earnest desire to have a family in the hell that was the Horde had spiraled out of control, and now Scorpia... god.

Scorpia would never, ever entertain thoughts of sacrilege, not like this. She wasn’t a pervert, she wouldn’t ever even think about Catra as a romantic option if she knew. Catra had done this, Catra’s lying, manipulating, had made the kindest person she’d ever known say something so perverse, so abhorrent. She’d been taking advantage of Scorpia anyway, dragging her down with her, hurting her by allowing her to care. 

So the solution, then, would be to make herself the pervert. Scorpia wouldn’t love her anymore, she would leave, and Catra would be alone, with no one to hurt but herself.

“I’m in love with Adora,” Catra stated, as forcefully as she could. Shame crept up her face, flattening her ears and reddening her cheeks, but not for the reason Scorpia stared at her in horror. Catra, incestuous. Catra, incestuous, and with the woman she shared a mother with. Scorpia’s shock and horror turned further into revulsion as her admittedly slow mind picked through all the implications of what Catra had just said. Catra tried her best to stay still, to bear it, to tolerate the disgust of the only person she’d still had in her corner.

“Catra, you can’t…” Scorpia tried, voice trembling around her emotion. “You can’t be serious, I mean, that’s not…”

This was a terrible idea, in hindsight, but then, weren’t all of Catra’s ideas?

Scorpia didn’t speak to Catra after that, which Catra had just about expected. She also didn’t tell anyone Catra’s secret, which she had also expected; Scorpia loved her truly, and would not shame her like that. Catra’s alleged attraction to Adora was kept secret between the two of them, a final act of kindness for the woman Scorpia had loved, and the only thing that had successfully pushed Scorpia away. Scorpia deserved better than Catra, anyway.

Then Catra was knocked unconscious by She-ra, and Adora got the last laugh.

“Hey, Hordak,” She-ra told the video camera that Bow nervously manned, “I’m not the only one who defected.” And there was Catra in the camera, eyes closed as though in sleep, peaceful looking, head nestled in the crook of Adora’s neck like it had always lain, when things were more straightforward.

Catra would’ve torn Adora’s throat out, after she watched the recording, knowing now she could never return to the Fright Zone and be accepted back. Would have, were it not for the circle around her, keeping her bound more effectively than shackles, though shackles would have been the greater comfort. Something to strain against, something to rub her wrists furless and raw and bleeding against, symbols of her unwilling captivity there. Shackles, a cold cell, the hard floor, they would have all been kinder than the soft couches with their cushions not even removed. Kinder than the circle that caused her no pain when she beat her fists against it. Kinder than the pleasant temperature and beautiful walls and waterfall. 

Adora knew that.

At the end, after everything Catra did, Adora _wanted_ to hurt Catra now. Wanted to strip her of everything and dig her heel into the back of Catra’s skull. Wanted to grind her nose in the culmination of her failures. Catra had done this to her. Shadow Weaver had made Catra into the person she was, and Catra had made Adora into this. Spiteful. Angry.

But it was Adora. And Adora, at her core, was sad. And scared. And Catra knew all too well the fear and sorrow that manifested in cruelty. She never thought she could actually push Adora to it. But there was Adora, glaring down at her, and Catra wished she would spit.

“We were never actually sisters,” cut deeper, hurt worse, than a flogger or a death sentence would have, anyway.

It was amazing, looking at things from this side. Shadow Weaver had been so confident, and now Catra could see why. It was easy to track Adora (she knew her better than her own blood). Adora’s moods, how she would come to the spare room when she needed something to accuse, someone to blame, some target to yell her frustrations at, and Catra was the easiest target in the castle. Adora was a Horde soldier, but a terrible one. She never hit Catra, not like she was supposed to, not like a good Horde girl. She just yelled, and Catra mocked, and then Adora yelled and Catra gave sullen advice, knowing that Adora was just scared, just hurting, just sad.

It was terrible, being on the other end of the equation. It was terrible, watching Adora sink to her knees in anguish, hating Catra but loving her more. It was terrible, because Catra had once said that she loved Adora, and she’d been right.

It was hilarious, when Adora’s friends found them like that, still believing Catra was an evening woman. Adora’s rushed explanations, drowning in Catra’s laughter and Twinkle and Boy’s shouts of horror. They were so noisy. It was really funny. Adora’s hand shoved hard over Catra’s laughing mouth as she shouted her own explanations sent a shiver down Catra’s spine.

It was weeks after the day Adora and Catra made up before Catra was allowed out of her “cell” (while attended by Bright Moon guards). The queen lady didn’t like it, but Catra didn’t much care what she liked or didn’t. She had Adora back, more meaningful than she’d had her before, although, back wasn’t quite the right word for it. Neither of them were Horde, anymore. This bright and shining place was their “home” now, with all its strangeness and soft corners. They weren’t the people they had been once.

Had they only ever been pretending to be those people?

Catra supposed if she was going to be labeled a turncoat, she might as well make good on it. The only missions she refused were the ones Scorpia might be at, unwilling to risk seeing her again. She knew she wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye. She knew she wouldn’t deserve to. 

But of course, all things come to a head. Catra’s “defection” had had a far greater impact than Adora’s, amongst the Hordesmen. Adora had been some rookie Force Captain. Catra had been Hordak’s second in command. Steadily, Horde soldiers had arrived in Bright Moon with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their willingness to work, and steadily, the Horde had shrunk and the Rebellion had grown mighty, and vicious.

Scorpia had never left. She was one of the few good people who hadn’t. She was there, in the final attack on the Fright Zone. She’d been a one-woman army the way Octavia, Grizzlor, Mantenna had all wished they could be. It had taken She-ra, the plant princess Catra didn’t care about, Mermista (who Catra only liked because she was the only princess who could rival her in both bitchy attitude and complaining about shit), and the tiny ice gremlin working together to take Scorpia down. Although she did not deserve to, Catra felt some pride at that. 

Entrapta was the problem they hadn’t been expecting. She was much more dangerous than they had planned. Her bots were of absurd quantities and quality, and while they’d been horrifying when corrupted, they were somehow even scarier when they were programmed to act like that. At least, that was what Glimmer said, Catra had to take her word for it. But the problem of Entrapta was also solved far more easily than they had planned. As soon as she saw Scorpia held unconscious, bleeding, at gunpoint, she surrendered everything, handed over her datapad to Bow in a rush with wide, frightened eyes.

Sometime between getting kidnapped and coming back as their enemy, Scorpia and Entrapta had fallen in love. Catra realized this, watching Entrapta cradle Scorpia to her breast with worker’s hands and mobile purple silk. Entrapta was wonderful, always had been, from the moment she’d stolen Catra’s food and asked her to come spy with people, Catra had known that. Watching her glare fearfully at anyone who approached, watching her cling to Scorpia while her terrifying robots stood uselessly, defensively around them, Catra felt some strange and aching thing _twist_ inside her. It paralyzed her long enough for Entrapta’s eyes to meet hers.

She wanted to explain, but a rebellion wouldn’t win itself. She stepped back, then back again, then back a third time and turned, wanting but relieved, also, so relieved. Entrapta was an evening woman, properly. She was a wonderful person, so wonderful, wild and exciting and brilliant and although she dropped attachments as soon as they dropped her, she loved deep for as long as her friends would have her. And Catra knew Scorpia far too loyal to ever leave her. They fit together. Morning and evening, as they should be, smart and kind, strong and small, excitable and moreso. 

Catra wondered if they were already in a sedoretu. She wondered if she’d know the other pair. Something ached in her that she didn’t have time for, so she took it out on a guard that got in her way. 

The Rebellion won. Hordak never stood a chance, not with his frail, rusting body, not with his depleted forces and powered-down robots. 

Queen Angella, who Catra refused to see as a mother figure and Adora adopted wholeheartedly, said something about that king dude Micah and two others that Catra probably should have known about, and then killed Hordak herself. Then she did a peculiar thing. She wept openly, the agony of two dozen years surfacing ugly and tumultuous and raw. Catra couldn’t bear to listen to her wails, torn from her throat with wordless pain, and Bow left with her. Adora and Glimmer were left with their mother and the corpse, Bow taking pointed fascination in the Imp that he had netted. 

“What happens to prisoners?” she asked the morning man. “In the Rebellion. The ones who aren’t me. What happens to the Horde soldiers who fought us here and didn’t die?” She didn’t want to ask the question. She needed to know the answer. 

“Well, most of them, we’re going to try and rehabilitate. If you of all people can come around, then we figure anyone can.”

“And people who don’t? People who are stubborn, or, or _loyal._ What happens to them?”

Bow placed his hand on Catra’s shoulder like he did with stupid Glimmer and she batted him away. They weren’t siblings except in moiety, and he had no right to try and comfort her. “That’s up to Angella,” he said, taking her cold shoulder like water off a duck, “but I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

A crash and a fight, a welcome distraction. Even with Hordak dead, some moron had decided to go for a last stand. 

Of course the moron was Scorpia. Of course there were no other princesses nearby. Scorpia, conscious again, loyal to a corpse, was fighting the Rebellion and winning. Rebellion soldiers stood no chance against her in a fight. Not even rebel leaders with fancy arrows. Scorpia could lift Bow one-handed and heft him away near effortlessly. Fortunately, that dumb pirate he kept hanging out with swung in on some sort of cable or wire and caught him before he could land on anything deadly. 

Catra stood before Scorpia. Scorpia stopped. There was an unspoken vastness between them and neither knew how to bridge it.

“Catra,” Scorpia said, tail waving dangerously behind her, “don’t make me hurt you.”

“Scorpia, it’s over!” Catra shouted, and it sounded like begging, “Hordak is dead! There’s nothing left for you to fight for!” 

“Maybe _you_ can—“

Entrapta’s hair on Scorpia’s shoulder quieted her, and Catra remembered, ghost-like, what it felt like to have Entrapta’s hair touch her kindly. She missed it. She missed them. She’d gotten Adora back but it had cost her something else. Everything in life was like that. Picking and choosing and prioritizing what you wanted to keep and what you could afford to lose. 

“I’m sorry,” Catra whispered, meaning it down to her shaking bones. The first time she’d said the words since she was a kid. Not even to Adora, though her lover had read between the lines Catra always seemed to cross. 

Scorpia and Entrapta both went tense, then very soft. Something ached between them all, the vastness smaller now, but tighter, tighter around Catra’s lungs and throat. 

“Please,” Catra begged as more Rebellion soldiers tramped in, “Please.”

And Scorpia allowed herself to be shackled and claimed, so long as Entrapta remained in her sight. The Rebellion was not cruel. They knew no recovery could come from mistrust, and left the two together, tied in purple knots. 

—

Scorpia was loyal, but to a people, a body, and now that the Horde was all gathered in Brightmoon, her loyalty shifted there. Not to the place, but to the soldiers and civilians around her. To new friends, to old allies reunited, to Adora, who she grew an ever increasing admiration and respect for. And to Catra. 

“You two know,” Catra started slowly, when she attempted to explain herself, explain all of it, from the beginning, “that Shadow Weaver…” Catra wrinkled her nose and opted to use Bow’s phrasing. “Did a number on me as a kid.”

“Yeah, we know,” Scorpia said gently, Entrapta said with her normal callous neutrality. They were both comforting tones for two different reasons. 

“She was an evening woman. She treated Adora like a daughter. And I…” this was hard to say, “wanted to be like her daughter too. I wanted Adora to be my family. So I lied about my moiety, which gave me some problems down the way.”

Scorpia blushed, “So when I said I was in love with you…”

Before she could grow horrified with herself, Catra and Entrapta both placed their hands on her claws.

“You didn’t know,” Catra said, “literally all of that was my fault.”

“Lots of people conflate attraction with friendship, especially when they’re traumatized,” Entrapta added helpfully, “It’s just you got confused romantic feelings in a, uh, _stranger_ way than most.”

Scorpia snorted, then began to chuckle ruefully, and Catra joined in, a little, and then Entrapta did, and then all three of them were laughing over something they couldn’t name and then Scorpia was hugging them, strong arms pulling them so close. 

A quiet moment passed, then a second with Catra’s tail flicking lazily in the silence. “I didn’t mean to leave,” she said. 

“I thought since you were in love with Adora..?” Scorpia stated as a question. 

“I wasn’t, then. It wasn’t until after she kidnapped me and we fought a lot that we went from enemies to lovers.”

Seeing Adora at her lowest had changed that. Seeing her hurting and lashing out had reminded Catra that this was her friend. Her moon. Her evening woman. Catra had needed to see Adora’s trauma come out ugly, the same way they’d both needed to fall back into each other’s gravity, the way they were always meant to. 

“But you like it here now?” Entrapta clarified, and Catra smiled. 

“I wouldn’t leave for the world.”

—

Despite being a morning woman, Catra wasn’t much of a morning person. Adora was nudging her roughly, yanking the blanket from her.

“Come on, we have to get ready!”

“Ugh, for what?” Catra groaned.

“Glimmer’s _wedding!”_ Adora said in that tone that meant this was not the first time Catra had heard of this. Or the second. 

Catra groaned again and half rose in the bed, squinting. The concept did sound familiar, but in a distant way. “She and Bow actually found two other people willing to put up with them for the rest of their lives?”

Adora paused in front of their open closet and gesticulated violently. “They’ve been courting Sea Hawk, Mermista, and Perfuma for _months!”_

Catra supposed that made sense, in hindsight. Bow was fond of Sea Hawk—disgustingly, openly so—and Glimmer had every reason to be in love with Mermista. As far as Catra was concerned, Mermista was the only princess that wasn’t Horde-raised that was worth spending any time with. Well, Horde-raised or Entrapta.

She really liked spending time with Entrapta, again. Liked listening to her and Adora play around with each other, liked being the willing-she-guessed audience to Entrapta’s science babbling, liked the big smile and wild eyes she got when she forgot to make her excitement look socially presentable. Liked the darker, sharper grins she gave when she was on the scent of something she wanted.

“Up. Dressed. C’mon,” Adora ordered, stripping from her nightwear and fussing with a pretty, red dress. Catra remained exactly where she was and enjoyed the view. 

“So they’re going in with five people from the start?” Catra asked lazily, enjoying the curve of Adora’s spine as she dressed in the morning’s moonlight. 

“Yeah, apparently they’re doing it a little unconventionally? There’s no core-four to their sedoretu, and all the marriages are mixed up?”

“So what are the pairs?”

“Bow and Glimmer are the Evening Marriage, Sea Hawk and Mermista are the Morning Marriage, Mermista and Perfuma are the Day Marriage, and Sea Hawk and Bow are the Night Marriage,” Adora listed off. “But Glimmer and Mermista like each other lots and Bow and Perfuma are definitely in love, so those are just the official marriages of the sedoretu.”

Catra hummed, and only after the zipper of Adora’s dress reached its top did she deign to get out of bed and dress herself. Half-wrinkled button up with the sleeves rolled, “fancy” capris, and an unfastened tie later, she was ready to go.

“You’re incorrigible,” Adora said, fondness aching in her voice so sweetly Catra reflexively punched her. She caught it, of course, because Catra didn’t actually want to hurt her, and laughed at her with a lover’s mockery.

The wedding was nice. The ceremony wasn’t too different from the Horde, just prettier, with more people. The party afterwards was definitely worthwhile.

“Have you ever thought about getting married?” Catra asked Adora, “Having a sedoretu of our own?”

Adora looked away from Scorpia, specifically her breasts, but her eyes got caught and flicked back when Scorpia laughed at something Entrapta had told her, her eyes squinting shut and boisterous joy filling the atmosphere. Catra just as intently watched Entrapta’s hair curl at the tips, pleased, delighted even, and Catra realized she’d been mindfully, intentionally collecting all those little quirks, cataloguing them for future reference.

“It would be nice,” Adora said, who had once been the only person Catra had cared enough to actually remember details about. But maybe it _would_ be nice to remember things about a few more.

\--

The first night Catra took Entrapta to bed was also the first night Adora went to Scorpia’s. Love came easily; easy to feel, easy to do, not so easy to say but luckily no one felt any need to push Catra into saying it. Entrapta would pause her with hair on her shoulder or wrist, and softly profess that she liked Catra too, and Adora would wrestle physically against Catra’s insistences that she did nothing because she liked her. Scorpia, ardent Scorpia, was every ounce the sister Catra had wanted, ached for, yearned for, and oftentimes the four of them would fall asleep together, all four gentled down soft. A family.

And Catra had wanted a family for a long, long time. 

“Wait, how would a wedding with just the four of us even work?” Entrapta asked, when Adora and Catra brought up the idea. “We don’t have any men.”

“Why would we need men?” all three of the Horde-raised women asked. Entrapta blinked, then blinked again.

“Well… it would be unconventional, definitely. A sedoretu needs two men and two women, right, I mean, historically speaking--but history also has a way of oversimplifying events, and if a system is broken then it should be tweaked to fit the needs of the situation at hand.” Entrapta began writing things down on her notepad. “We do have two evening and two morning people, so there’s technically enough for a sedoretu. And I certainly don’t really want to marry a man, but childbirth is relatively dependent on that sort of thing, unless Adora has genitalia that perform a different function than I presently assume. Although, adoption is definitely an option, especially since lives were lost battling Hordak’s forces.

“Okay! You’ve convinced me!” Entrapta announced, and her family kindly did not point out that none of them had really done any convincing, they’d just listened to her. “One question though! How would we know which weddings are which?”

“Oh yeah,” Scorpia murmured and Adora immediately lifted a fist to her chin to think.

“Let’s just do it the most cliche way possible!” Catra said with a casual shrug and a pfft of air. “Scorpia and Adora both wore dresses to princess prom, Entrapta and I both wore pants.”

“Catra, that’s way too oversimplified!” Adora protested as Scorpia nodded along and said, “Oh, good idea!”

“I like it!” Entrapta seconded.

“Great, majority rules. Scorpia and Entrapta will be the Evening marriage, Adora and I will be the Morning Marriage, Entrapta and I will be Night, and Scorpia and Adora will be Day. Easy peasy problem solved.”

“Works for me,” Entrapta said as Adora grudgingly ceded. Scorpia snorted, then began to laugh.

“You know, it’s a little funny. I’ve used the line, ‘together let’s make a Day’ on two of the women here, and it turns out the one I’m making a Day Marriage with is actually neither of them!”

And it felt good, to laugh about it. To put that far enough behind them to make it into jokes. 

“I’ll go let Angella know; she’ll want to help,” Adora stated.

And Queen Angella did. Catra still wasn’t able to accept Angella as a serious part of her own life, but only just not _yet._ Maybe, someday, she’d be important to Catra too. An authority she could please. A protective woman who had, in some situations quite literally, taken Catra under her wing. She nagged, but it didn’t feel half so stifling as Glimmer made it seem.

Catra kind of hated Glimmer, a little, but she kind of liked her too. So even though she would never admit to it, she was happy when Glimmer and her sedoretu arrived at Catra’s wedding, hugs being passed around and Scorpia and Sea Hawk immediately breaking out into an informal competition of who could love seeing each other again the loudest. 

It felt good to be married. It felt good to move into one of the Brightmoon castle’s wings, Adora’s room facing the dawn, early riser that she was, Catra’s tucked away in the northern corner--for a certain value of “corner” in this rounded palace--Entrapta’s towards the interior of the building which she could access through the vents, and Scorpia’s overlooking the brook that twined through the Whispering Woods.

This was home now. This was family now. And Catra basked in it, proud morning woman, proud champion of the rebellion, proud wife of the women she loved.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Loves making things overcomplicated and convoluted  
Ursula K. Le Guin: Gives me THIS
> 
> Also for those who want a visual  
  
The Horde trio don't actually show up in this but they're there in my brain, endlessly searching for their morning woman


End file.
